In present day manufacturing of aircraft fuselages, it has been typical to carry out the fabrication of the fuselage shell, the equipping of that fuselage shell, and the final outfitting or interior furnishing of that fuselage shell in separate distinct stages carried out in succession after the previous stage has been completed for the entire fuselage.
To carry out the fabricating stage, it is typical to first join together large surface area curved fuselage shell components by means of riveting to form fuselage sections, for example using riveting equipment disclosed in German Patent Laying Open Document 34 38 584 and corresponding U.S. Pat. No. 4,662,556 (Gidlund), the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference. The resulting fuselage sections are then typically joined to each other along transverse or circumferential seams to form larger aircraft fuselage segments, using both automatic riveting systems as well as manual operations.
After the aircraft fuselage, or at least a relatively large fuselage segment, has been assembled from plural fuselage sections, the entire resulting fuselage shell is transferred to at least another assembly station or area for carrying out the equipping of the entire fuselage shell, and thereafter the entire fuselage shell is transferred to at least a further assembly station or area for carrying out the outfitting of the entire fuselage shell. In this context, the equipping of the fuselage shell involves installing various aircraft systems components and equipment such as pipes, conduits, ducts, auxiliary devices and equipment, and structural components in the raw fuselage shell. The outfitting stage involves the installation of various outfitting components such as insulation packets or blankets, electrical conductor bundles, floors, wall paneling, furnishings including seats and baggage compartments for example, fittings and various finish and trim components.
It is apparent from the above discussion that the production cycle for manufacturing a finished aircraft fuselage involves plural independent and successive stages of fabrication, assembly and installation operations carried out sequentially one after the other for the entire aircraft fuselage. Especially due to the extraordinary size of a modern day commercial aircraft fuselage, such a conventional fabrication and assembly process is rather space intensive and time intensive and therefore costly. Assembly areas including the necessary support arrangements and the like require a large capital investment and also require a rather large and expensive building to enclose the large working space including the several successive assembly and installation areas or stages. The conventional step-by-step assembly and installation process, in which prescribed production steps or stages are carried out at a given assembly area and thereafter the aircraft fuselage is moved to the next assembly area for carrying out the successive assembly or installation stages, suffers another disadvantage, in that the entire production cycle will be affected by a problem causing a delay at any one of the successive assembly areas. As a result, any problem in any stage of the fabrication or installation process can lead to production standstills or delays of the entire production process.